


The Beginning

by Blacknwhitewings



Series: It Shall End Wherever It Began [1]
Category: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Minor Character Death, Obviously There Are Zombies, Zombies, happy moments though, part1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 09:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacknwhitewings/pseuds/Blacknwhitewings
Summary: More and more unmentionables rise each passing day and soon all of England will drown in the Flood.





	1. Pemberley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thiamma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiamma/gifts).



> So, first work and still in progress. English is not my first language and I'm not quite accustomed to Austen's style so if you have suggestions, comments or remarks please feel free to comment or pm me to help me progress!

It was her home; in the middle of the Derbyshire, lost in the wonders of a garden as much as Asian as it was English, stood a house marvelous in its Japanese architecture. Humbly, shyly even, Elizabeth Darcy entered this place as its mistress for the first time. Mrs. Reynolds immediately joined her in the hall, the old woman’s eyes shining of restrained tears and her face brightened by a smile of pure joy. She took Mrs. Darcy’s hands in her, her palms were sweet and cool, and she began to praise on how happy she was to meet her new mistress and how she knew the instant she met her she would be the one to offer her young master happiness. Elizabeth chuckled and kissed the housekeeper’s cheek, warmly thanking her for such a greeting in this so needed time.

“Mrs. Reynolds, my eyes see you with joy. I feel silly but I was quite nervous to enter my own home for the first time.”

“Do not worry, dear. I settled for you in the patio a nice cup of tea. You must be weary from such a journey and all alone, no less! What was my master thinking letting his newlywed wife travel alone when everywhere is so dangerous! Come, come, dear!” She did not stop talking all the way to the little seating area put in place moments before the carriage stopped in front of the huge house, but Elizabeth did not mind at all.

Truth was, she felt so lonely during her trip from London to Pemberley, having hoped previously that she would enter it hand in hand with her beloved husband. But the army once more took him from her and he settled her journey without him. Two cups were settled on the table and Elizabeth inquired about the second guest, knowing Georgiana should not be home yet in about a fortnight. So when she saw Colonel Fitzwilliam enter the patio after her she could not help herself but smile at his and give him her hands in a glad greeting.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam! I surely did not expect to see you at Pemberley! The travel must have wearied you greatly, dear friend!”

He bowed and chastely kissed the back of her hands. “Dear cousin, when I heard you would be alone in here, having neither your husband nor any of your sisters… I felt obliged to visit to assure myself of your well-being.” He helped her with the chair in a gallant way more than really helpful one before settling himself. “Last time we saw each other it was at your wedding and your sister’s. Is she well since?”

“Wonderfully well, in fact. Charles and she are still in London I think, and I dare say they are perfectly fit for each other. So sweet and gentle, I never saw her so fond of someone before.”

He sipped on his cup, pensive, his hand naturally rubbing the metal knee war had given him. “Wonderful it is. I received words from Fitzwilliam and I never saw him as happy as now as well, dear cousin. You should give yourself credit for this. Anyways, I will stay here for some time for since Mr. Darcy will be absent for a month, the guardianship of his sister befalls on me even if I do not doubt you will be a wonderful sister to her. So I will be here mainly to teach you on the whereabouts of this house, and on the maintaining of this estate.”

Elizabeth smiled and nodded. She would need help indeed for keeping this house together would not be the same as keeping Longbourn. So she thanked her new cousin and they conversed for a while while drinking tea under the cherry-trees of Pemberley’s garden.

Eventually, as night was slowly closing around the two still seated in the patio, they decided to end the conversation for the time being and continuing whenever Elizabeth would have finished to settle in the master’s room. Mrs. Reynolds escorted her, commenting on how she would love living in Pemberley and how this house had everything a young bride could dream about. But the lady didn’t listen to her, her mind too full with less petty matters. She had had to lower her weapons and cease her fighting activities as soon as Darcy had put a ring on her finger and she disliked the idea very much. In fact she hated it. More so since she would have to be the one protecting the estate while her husband would be far away and she decently could not ask Georgiana Darcy to do it alone. This looming over her head the lady could not properly enjoy the tour of the house as she would normally do but when she arrived at the master’s room she could not help but gasp at its beauty. All the walls were covered with a paper much like the ones used for the Japanese panels and very few pieces of furniture came to hide the gorgeous work of paint covering the paper and showing carps and cherry trees and everything one could dream of when talking about Japanese art. In the center of the room laid however a large bed resembling a futon but not to be put away by day, and in front of one of the large window, a low table bore everything needed to write letters and nearby was a cushion ideally placed to be bathed in sunrays. Mrs. Reynolds showed the hidden wardrobes to Elizabeth and soon after left her in the sudden quietness of the room.

Elizabeth lit several candles across the place, trying to shut away a sudden and silly frighten coming with the night. She then sat in front of the low table and undertook to write to Darcy and tell him about her arrival at their domain and her eagerness on seeing him join her there. This done, she laid down in the cushion, thinking back about her honeymoon in London, the magic of England’s big city and the safety provided by the walls. Surely the attacks inside the huge walls of the major city had increased those last weeks but thankfully not alarmingly enough to be worried. She sighed, fidgeting with a knife, asking herself what her life would look like now that she was married and how she could convince Darcy to let her fight alongside him.


	2. the In-Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dead act strangely and the living may not be a match for them.

Mounted on his black steed, Darcy could see the extent of the battlefield that would cover more than the eye could see or imagine. From afar, the gigantic wave of unmentionables fell on England like a never ending plague and by the minute more and more living soldiers succumbed and joined the ranks of the filth moved as if following a silent, merciless, flawless martial plan. How could they win? His men were waiting near him, waiting for him to formulate a perfect strategy to end this nightmarish vision but he had none. He had nothing. As they were, he was filled with a dread so powerful it did not let him think for a second about an idea that could save England.

“Colonel! We need to detonate the explosives!!”

Yes, the explosives; of course that was the solution. Although it would not be a permanent solution, it could bring a few weeks of peace to think about the matter and about a better way of ending the invasion from the dead. “Detonate the charges at once, men! Cut the access to the lands and let the fastest ones rot in the pits!!”

Instantly, the surroundings filled with the shouts, the cries, the shrieks and the deafening explosions. The pits the soldiers had dug prior to the attacks, the preventive ones, suddenly let go of the mortal traps and the undead engulfed in them as the thin bridges of dirt and rock collapsed under fire. It seemed like a downpour of dismantled bodies scattering in the ditches. “Lit the oil, _now_!!” As soon as the order was giver, the red coats, grunting under the effort, poured burning oil in the pits, setting fire to the moaning and screaming unmentionables deep in. And, strangely, all the other stopped in front of the pits. As they would be but one man, they turned toward Darcy still mounted on his black steed. They were all different. Some fresh, some rotten, some so old their skin was no more than leather or parchment and some were so scrawny it was hard to tell what they could have been prior to their demise. And all of them looked at Darcy, silent as wax figures near their shrieking peer that were still burning at their feet. Nothing move anymore. And, still silent, sill too much like an army, they turned heels and left the place, returning to the now lost villages trapped within the blazing pits that would do like a new frontier separating the living from the dead. A small in-between in the in-between.

Darcy ran his shaking finger through his dark hair, still unnerved by what he had witnessed and not fully understood. But for now the worst had been avoided. England would live a couples of weeks still and they would have to settle for this lukewarm victory. He heeled his horse and galloped to the encampment near the frontline. The General was in the middle of the tents and seeing him squeezed his heart as he remembered how hopeless he had been a moment before. He unmounted the steed and gave the reins to a boy nearby before saluting the officer.

“Colonel Darcy, I heard your men managed to contain the assault. Have you an explanation to give for the strange behavior of the unmentionables back there?”

“None, sir. I am afraid I must admit I find myself as clueless as you.” He lowered his head.

“Don’t be sorry, boy. I would not be as confident as I am now would I witnessed the same thing. Now, we need to strengthen our resolve and find a way to eradicate the menace once and for all. To-morrow we will have a meeting in the officers’ tent but for now you and your men must rest.” The General pensively stroke his long white beard, gazing afar. “A battle against the dead is as terrible as we die quicker than we live. Their supply is fast and efficient. But we are blessed for they can do little against fire and it still is the best way to permanently put them to rest for good this time. It is here that we need to put our effort in.” And with this elusive sentence, he turned heels and left the place, promptly followed by the two soldiers acting as his very shadow.

 

Once he was alone in his tent, Darcy suddenly felt how weary he was. He slowly sat on the simple camp bed, his head tilted frontward, and allowed himself to breathe since several days before. His mind instantly went to Elizabeth waiting for him at Pemberley and Georgiana that had to flee London in a hurry the morning before the attack for London had beginning to fall suddenly. Mrs. Cottonmather, her governess and Joshua, her bodyguard were the only employee that had managed to survive the assault on the main city and were now her only line of protection against the unmentionables roaming the lands. He was scared for his beloved sister and wife more than for England itself. And even if Elizabeth could easily manage to defend herself against a raid of a dozen undead, what could she possibly do when it would be her against the whole country? He had no idea on how the rest of the world was, having only his memories of a peaceful Japan protected by its very own geographical peculiarities, but he had not been to the continent since he was but a boy. Was it still a safe haven there? Was it only England that suffered for its greed?

He rubbed his face and loudly sighed, exhausted beyond every possible mean but the day was not over for him as Elizabeth had been alone in Pemberley for a week and she had to long for a letter from him. So he sat in front of the simple desk provided in the tent and began to write without saying too much, afraid that her peculiar temper would force her to join the frontline at once when all he really wanted was to leave her as far as possible from the dreadful. His hand shook a little when he wrote about the fall of London, though, not even sure to fully grasp himself what it meant to have lost the head of the Kingdom. All the remaining leaders had been evacuated to Edinburgh and the safety of its gigantic walls, however who could know for how long this would remain thus? But the battle was all but finished and in the following morrow he and his men were to circle the surroundings and kill every unmentionable that would still roam the lands around. Darcy did not sleep well this night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 it is! As it'll be until this work is done and perfect (if I can somehow manage that) all advice and critics are welcome!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed and chapter 2 is on its way o/  
> And since I try myself on this first chapter it may change in the few next days so keep your eyes peeled


End file.
